


You've Got the Right (to remain on the dance floor)

by firstbreaths



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:05:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstbreaths/pseuds/firstbreaths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In the parking lot, Brittany just clambers up on the hood of Blaine’s car, long lithe legs dangling over the edge, and says, “Lord Tubbington gave up smoking months ago, he’s not breaking any health department rules.” Or: the one where Blaine and Brittany bond over Dance Dance Revolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've Got the Right (to remain on the dance floor)

**Author's Note:**

> Set during 3x01-3x08

Here’s one thing most of the New Directions don’t know about Blaine Anderson: he’s a pro at Dance Dance Revolution.

Blaine’s at the bowling alley after school, feet a blur of movement as he focuses on the screen, trying to find to find the perfect rhythm. Jeff got a high score here three weeks ago, when a group of the Warblers had descended upon Lima for the weekend after a party at Kurt’s, and Blaine’s determined to beat it, his shoulders set square and his hips snapping into each move as the game gets harder and harder.

He jumps up into the air, slamming down hard on the arrows and breathing deep as he misses one of the moves, his foot planting into the dance mat a second too late.

_Why did you let me leave?_

Blaine stumbles a little then, his body suddenly heavy and sagging like a sodden rag, and he misses a second move, his feet landing a little too far sideways; he feels weighed down by his own expectations. It’s not – he attended prom with Kurt last year, and the Night of Neglect concert before that, he knows that disillusionment grows at McKinley like weeds, difficult to control. He just hadn’t expected it in New Directions – from _Finn,_ really -  and he supposes that may have something to do with the fact that he hadn’t expected much beyond being able to hold Kurt’s hand in the back row, really, about being able to lean over and kiss him after a particularly rousing performance.

The rest of McKinley, he’d expected to struggle with. Blaine knows arseholes when he sees them, has mentally catalogued the correlation between their brute force and the number of bruises blooming like wilting violets along his ribs and spine. But Kurt had made the choir room sound like – well, Dalton, really, in the middle of Clusterfuck, Ohio, only minus the uniforms and Thad’s obsession with Yoda.

The screen flashes suddenly, indicating that the game’s over, and Blaine’s head falls slightly when he realises that he missed Jeff’s high score by only fifty points. He wipes at his sweaty forehead with the hem of his shirt, breathing heavily in and out, before leaning forward to slot another coin into the machine, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, letting the energy buoy him, like it can anchor him so he’s not drifting quite as far out to sea as he feels.

He can do this. He can do this.

_Why didn’t you make me stay?_

*

He’s back again the following weekend, while Kurt’s at Rachel’s getting started on his NYADA application, and if his movements are a little sharper than usual, well – he’s still hitting all of the right moves. It’s not like anybody can actually tell.

Boxing still helps sometimes, but what Blaine’s feeling isn’t so much aggression as it is deep-seated loneliness, the kind that settles itself into his veins until he suddenly feels too big and bursting with it for his skin. It happens even when Kurt’s around, more so actually, because he’s all too acutely reminded – once Kurt leaves, he has no one left. It’s why he’s so intent on scoring a part in the musical, it’s all the cliché Dalton brochures he’d once read and his father’s slightly condescending tone all rolled into one, _joining an extracurricular activity is one way in which we encourage social interaction and involvement,_ like he couldn’t figure it out for himself.

Maybe he can’t.

The game moves through a few levels, and he’s just starting to get a rhythm happening when he’s interrupted by someone behind him; Blaine can feel them peering over his shoulder. He keeps trying to stay focussed, staring intently at the flashing pointers on the screen, when he hears, “You remind me of the monkeys at the zoo,” and he turns around because oh, _okay. Wow._

“Excuse me,” he says, blinking as he trips off the edge of the map, only to see Brittany staring up at him with a vague smile. “Did Santana put you up to this? Because – as much as I hate to buy into the joke, and all, you can tell her I don’t want any of her monkey business.”

“No,” Brittany replies, smiling, and Blaine’s left gaping as she steps up onto the mat, picking up the steps from where he’d left off, hitting each of the cues with perfect ease, “they get trained to dance by following their food, just like you’re learning to dance by following these steps.”

“Learning to -?”

“Kurt told me you’re trying out for _West Side Story,_ ” Brittany replies, and it all clicks, suddenly – Kurt dressing up in a tuxedo and asking Blaine to take pictures, Blaine kissing a stripe of glitter from Kurt’s cheek in the choir room yesterday; he’s worried that Blaine might get the lead in the musical, and he’s dedicating extra effort to his student body president campaign in an effort to make up for it. He can’t – that’s ridiculous, even as a voice in Blaine’s head asks if it actually is. Blaine’s a lot of things to a lot of different people, but he’s not about to let _anyone_ underestimate his talent. “You can’t dance like that, you’re too square.”

She pauses as the game ends, and there’s no way he’s getting his high score with all the steps he missed in the middle, so he lets it go, not even bothering to watch the screen. “You need to be more like a circle,” and Blaine’s still marvelling at the fact that a girl who apparently doesn’t even know the alphabet knows all of her shapes, when she adds, “like a Kinder Surprise egg. They’re round and smooth, and you don’t know what you’re going to get when you open it, so it’s like a fun surprise. Dancing is boring when you know what happens next.”

 _I don’t know where anything is heading,_ Blaine thinks, but he thinks he might get it. Spontaneity – from an impromptu performance of _Teenage Dream_ to an unplanned declaration of love – helped him get this far with Kurt, and it might just work out now. He _has_ to get back to McKinley to change his audition forms.

He claps a hand on Brittany’s shoulder as he races out, mouthing _thank you._ In response, she just waves at him with a lopsided grin and yells, “Santana wants to know if you got kicked out of Dalton because you couldn’t help them find Mordor. The people down my street, their last name is ‘Moore’ so I took her down there, and they said they didn’t know you…”

Blaine’s still chuckling when he starts his car, putting his foot down hard on the gas pedal as he reverses out of his park. Maybe he doesn’t need the musical; his father hadn’t exactly been recommending a capella groups when he’d enrolled in Dalton, after all, and yet –

He makes a mental note to ask Brittany if she plays DDR often; she’d certainly been good at it.

*

She does, and before long they’re both meeting there two days a week, occasionally grabbing coffee at the Lima Bean with the group first. Blaine soon learns that Brittany likes green tea – she seems to think that the teabags work like those colour changing markers everyone had been obsessed with in third grade, and it meets Sue Sylvester’s ridiculous dietary standards – and once things get frosty between the New Directions and the Troubletones, he’ll sometimes grab her a cup and wait for her to finish Cheerios practice with Santana.

They dance for an hour or two each time, taking it in turns; sometimes they’re silent, other times they’ll shout out the moves that are on the screen. Once, Brittany brings Lord Tubbington, leaving Blaine gaping as she feeds him fries from the bowling alley canteen when he sits on the right marker, and then frantically trying to scramble out of there as one of the employees screams about health violations. He thinks he ought to invite her to McKinley to see the standard of their cafeteria meat.

In the parking lot, Brittany just clambers up on the hood of Blaine’s car, long lithe legs dangling over the edge, and says, “Lord Tubbington gave up smoking months ago, he’s not breaking any health department rules.”

Blaine just clutches his side, laughing harder than he has in months.

*

The day after he meets Sebastian, Blaine’s so dizzy with bewilderment that he misses the final step three times in a row; it’s been a long time (since _Kurt,_ since, _I’ve been looking for you forever,_ his mind supplies helpfully), his mind and body saturated but this throat parched like a cloth wrung out to dry, he doesn’t have the words to explain what he feels.

The day after Kurt meets Sebastian, Brittany says, “Can I meet your meerkat friend, I need someone to teach Lord Tubbington how to use a knife and fork properly.” It takes him a second to understand that she’s talking about _Meerkat Manor,_ and a second longer to realise that Kurt’s been bitching to someone – probably Mercedes or Tina – about Sebastian.

He can’t _blame_ him – Blaine still feels sick to his stomach when he remembers Kurt’s friendship with Karofsky for reasons other than how generally _creepy_ Karofsky is – but he does wish that Kurt would discuss it with him. Sometimes, Blaine is learning, there’s an advantage to be gained from speaking, rather than singing, and yet –

 _and what was just a world is now a star_ is a cacophony in his head like a call to arms, and he thinks of all the things to be learnt from New Directions, Rachel Berry’s piercing high notes like a needle, stitching together what was once pulled apart. _One hand, one heart._

“Of course,” he says, to Brittany, making a mental note to discourage her from mentioning her theory about how Thad’s secretly a centaur. There are days where he’s inclined to agree, but he feels like he knows Sebastian, a little – and no one offends Brittany. “Now that the Lima Bean’s started making those _amazing_ gingerbread cookies, I think that as good an excuse to go there as any.”

He doesn’t need the excuse, but it’s nice, after everything, to have an opt out clause anyway.

*

Besides, it’s _totally_ worth it to see the way that Sebastian’s eyebrows raise when Brittany says, “your dad’s a state comptroller? You look awfully clean for someone who lives under a bridge.”

Blaine can almost pretend not to notice when Kurt laughs a little too hard at that.

*

Blaine’s at the bowling alley after school again, listening to the sound of the vending machine rattling as he waits for his drink, when he hears someone shifting behind him, his entire body tensing, _are they -_?

It’s Brittany behind him though, and he’s just about to ask if she’d still like help with studying for that math test next week when he notices that her eyes are puffy and that her cheeks are red. He’s fairly sure she’s not trying to start a two-man circus with Lord Tubbington this time.

After a moment’s silence, Blaine reaches out and grabs her arm, steadying her, and guides her to a seat in the cafeteria, where he asks, “are you okay?”

 _Why are you not okay?_  he thinks, because he knows – that’s the question he wishes more people had asked him, would ask him. It’s easier – harder, but easier too -  when he can’t just use a one word lie to avoid it. Blaine’s a lot of things, thinking _with each scar there’s a map_ like his Katy Perry showstopper for “offensive as fuck week” (Santana’s words, not his, and he’d stopped himself from agreeing with her the moment Finn had stared him down; there’s an entire country etched indelibly into his skin right there). The one thing he’s not, however, is good at talking about his feelings, and he wonders if it’s maybe because he’s had so few opportunities to do so.

“It’s Santana,” Brittany manages to tell him finally, and he just nods numbly, because _of course,_ before handing her a handkerchief from his back pocket. “I just… I thought that my sweet lady kisses might help her feel better, she usually says they do, and then she ran from the room.”

“Have you talked to her about it?” Blaine asks finally, “After everything, I don’t know if singing will help – I think she’s the one who needs a chance to have someone listen. It doesn’t even have to be about your relationship, just ask her about her day, or something.”

“She spends a lot of her day thinking about ways to make Kurt take his clothes off,” Brittany replies, and when Blaine splutters so loud that it attracts a stare from three tables over, he doesn’t even bother to control himself, because Brittany’s adding, “she says he looks so gay it makes her want to puke rainbows, so I invited her over to watch the Weather Channel with me, and then –“

“Santana ran out when things got kind of…” Blaine finishes, because he can just picture it, and he suddenly, fiercely understands why Santana loves Brittany so much, and why it’s so difficult for her – predicting the future is like weather forecasting, a little, and he knows how difficult it can be to look for the rainbow when the skies are continually grey. It gets a little ridiculous after that, and he reminds himself to stick to watching the History Channel as a form of studying with Tina. “But I’m sure she’ll run back to you, too.”

Brittany’s lower lips trembles a little, and he wishes he had something better to offer her, even as he remembers – the Warblers, they were his New Directions, once. Even if that means it’s quite possible that makes him Brittany’s Wes, or Thad, which…

“It’s because she cares so much about you that this is difficult for her,” Blaine says, and if it feels heavy like a leaden weight on his tongue when he says it, it’s got little to do with his parents, with Cooper, _okay._ “Don’t _ever_ tell Santana I said this, but I admire how much she cares about people, even if she sucks at showing it most of the time. You just have to help her remember that it’s that which helps with all of this, in the end…”

“You can call Santana a ‘bitch’, Blaine,” Brittany says, and one day he’ll learn to act in a way that doesn’t make him appear as though he has whiplash, around Brittany, when she adds, “she thinks it’s cool, when you grow a spine. Is that like when they stick sea monkeys in a tank, because Santana said she wants to throw you in the pool to see what your hair looks like when it gets wet.”

Blaine just laughs, burying his face in his hands. “I’m not going to call her a bitch,” he says, shaking his head, “we’re all in this together, to bastardise _High School Musical,_ a little.”

He reaches out across the table and takes her hands in his, a gesture that speaks so little and so much all at once. It reminds him of all the times he’s held Kurt’s hand in the choir room, at Breadstix, and indignation curls sharply like a fishhook in his gut, catching about his ribcage – it seems to be a thing, for him, for Kurt, for Santana, for Brittany; the harder they fight, the more they flounder, the pieces of them splintering, never a clean break. The harder they push, the faster they move, the less it hurts; he hates how easily they’ve become accustomed to the fight and the flight.

Blaine thinks about hard he’s fought, for the right to hold Kurt’s hand, the way he’s currently holding Brittany’s, and he helps her up saying, “want to dance?”

*

In the choir room, later, the first staccato beats of the music thrum through Blaine’s body as he starts to dance. As he glances around, at Kurt, at Santana, at Finn, who’s smiling gently at him, and at Brittany, he knows – this is the highest score they’re ever going to get.   

It might not be a rainbow, but they can _burn brighter than the sun._

  
  



End file.
